How Does Bishop Nikon Defend the Ukrainians?

Published:Pravda TrudaNo. 3, September 13, 1913.

      Published according to thePravda Trudatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages379-381.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Itis reported inKievskaya Myslthat Bishop
Nikon, deputy to the State Duma, Right, was the first to put his signature
to the bill on the Ukrainian school and Ukrainian associations submitted to
the Duma.

Thebill says: teaching in elementary schools in the Ukrainian language
shall be permitted; Ukrainian teachers shall be appointed; the teaching of
the Ukrainian language and the history of the Ukraine shall be introduced;
Ukrainian associations shall not be persecuted and they shall not be closed
“at the discretion of the authorities, which is frequently undisguised
lawlessness”.

ThusPurishkevich’s party comrade, Bishop Nikon, does not likelawlessnessincertaincases.

BishopNikon is quite right in assuming that the question he raises
“is one of outstanding importance, one that concerns the perversion of the
thirty-seven million Ukrainians”; in saying that “the rich, beautiful,
talented, flourishing and poetic Ukraine is being condemned to
degeneration, gradual stultification and slow extinction”.

Theprotest against, the oppression of the Ukrainians by the Great
Russians is a perfectly just one. But let us look at the arguments Bishop
Nikon puts forward in defence of the Ukrainian demands.

“TheUkrainian people do not seek any of this notorious autonomy,
   re-establishment of the Zaporozhye Sech or something of that kind; the
   Ukrainians are not separatists....  The Ukrainians are not people of
   foreign extraction, they are our own people, our blood brothers, and as
   such should not suffer any limitations in respect of their language and the
   development of their national culture; other wise we equate them, our
   brothers, with the Jews, Poles, Georgians and others, who actually are
   people of foreign extraction.”

“TheUkrainian people do not seek any of this notorious autonomy,
   re-establishment of the Zaporozhye Sech or something of that kind; the
   Ukrainians are not separatists....  The Ukrainians are not people of
   foreign extraction, they are our own people, our blood brothers, and as
   such should not suffer any limitations in respect of their language and the
   development of their national culture; other wise we equate them, our
   brothers, with the Jews, Poles, Georgians and others, who actually are
   people of foreign extraction.”

Andso it boils down to this—the Ukrainian Bishop Nikon and others of
his school of thought are begging the Great-Russian landowners to grantprivilegesto the Ukrainians on the grounds that they are their
brothers, while the Jews are people of foreign extraction! To put it simply
and forthrightly—because the Jews and others are of foreign extraction we
agree to oppress them, if you make concessions to us.

Thepicture is the familiar one of the defence of “national culture”by allbourgeois nationalists, from the Black Hundreds to the
liberals, and even to the bourgeois-democratic nationalists!

WhatBishop Nikon refuses to understand is that the Ukrainians cannot
be protected from oppression unless all peoples, without exception, are
protected from all oppression, unless the concept “people of foreign
extraction” is completely expunged from the life of the state, unless the
complete equality of rights of all nationalities is upheld. No one can be
protected from national oppression unless the most extensive local and
regional autonomy and the principle of settlingallstate
questions in accordance with the will of the majority of the population
(that is, the principle of consistent democracy) are consistently put into
practice.

BishopNikon’s slogan of “national culture” for the Ukrainians means
nothing more than the propagation of Black-Hundred ideas in the Ukrainian
language; it is the slogan of Ukrainian-clerical culture.

Politicallyconscious workers have understood that the slogan of
“national culture” is clerical or bourgeois deception—no matter whether
it concerns Great-Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Georgian or any other
culture. A hundred and twenty-five years ago, when the nation had not been
split into bourgeoisie and proletariat, the slogan of national culture
could have been a single and integral call to struggle against feudalism
and clericalism. Since that time, however, the class struggle between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat has gained momentum everywhere. The
division of the “single” nation into exploiters and exploited has become
an accomplished fact.

Onlythe clericals and the bourgeoisie can speak of national culture in
general. The working people can speak onlyof the international culture of the world working-class movement. That is
the only culture that means full, real, sincere equality of nations, the
absence of national oppression and the implementation of democracy. Only
the unity and solidarity of workers of all nations inallworking-class organisations in the struggle against capital will lead to
“the solution of the national problem”.